Wednesday, December 28, 2011

We continue to make snow as the cold night temps allow as we wait for more snow from mother nature. This is only the first week of Winter so we have lots of Winter ahead.

The storm hitting the Pacific NW on Friday may bring a quick snow shower to the mountain. Next week the ridge will start to push further up the West Coast keeping the Tuesday storm to our North. Then there is quick retrogression of the ridge the middle of next week allowing the Friday storm to dig a bit further South.

The models have been taking turns showing this storm coming far enough South to bring snow. Today's Euro dug it far enough South to bring several inches of snow. We will have to continue to watch the possibility of a little snow over the next few days. It then looks like the pattern slows and the trough digs North of Hawaii.

Next week is when the MJO (Madden Julian Oscillation) enters the Western Pacific and we would expect to see the ridge start to pull away from the coast the following week in response. There is plenty of cold building over Alaska and Canada and that cold will pour into the trough South of the Aleutian Islands and the East Coast next week. Then we will watch for the ridge to shift out in the Pacific to a position between Hawaii and the Aleutian Islands. That will allow the cold to shift into the West.

We have been talking about this scenario possibly coming in January with the cold pushing down the West Coast from Alaska pushing the jet stream further South. The GFS as well as the European forecast models are showing the retrogression of the ridge away from the West Coast and out to 150w with a trough down the West Coast the second week of January. That would open up the storm door into the West coast.

We will continue to watch for the storms to return as we move towards the second week of Winter. BA